Why Innovation lag is a drain on economy

If you go to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport today, you can check yourself in and get a boarding pass without going to the counter. You can do the same from your phone or computer. That is great progress.

However, those who have travelled abroad may not be marvelled by that; it is coming here a decade later.

That we are often the last to try new ideas is not in doubt. In politics, we are trying the American political system after more than 200 years. In academia, scholars use sources published before they were born or ideas that are no longer useful or have been replaced by more relevant and powerful ideas.

FOOD SECURITY

We are happy to import an eight-year-old car and make heads turn with our “new” car (like my Vitz). We were celebrating the Hummer a whole 22 years after its release. We are debating whether to allow genetically modified crops while worrying about food security.

There is a noticeable time lag, with innovations taking too long to land on our shores. It is only in fashion, hairstyles, music and movies that we seem current. The private sector and military are often the pioneers in innovations before they trickle to other sectors. But why the lag?

First, we do not originate most of these innovations. We are net importers of new ideas. The originators only export them here because they got a newer idea and want to start a new S-curve or extend the life of a product. We got EFI cars after the innovators got VVTi. This is very clever from a business perspective: you have two growth markets, one for the new idea and one for the old idea. I recently saw seminars advertised for ideas introduced in 1992 elsewhere.

If we were originating the ideas, we would reduce this lag. Data from the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) shows that we register very few patents, a proxy measure for new ideas. We write few books, publish few journals. Without our own ideas, we import old and tired ideas.

We spawn few innovations because we do little research. Developed countries devote about 3 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to research and development (R&D), we devote less than 1 per cent, most of which goes to paying non-researchers.

It is instructive that the most profitable ideas are from science and technology, from cars to electronics. We put less money and emphasis on that.

There are few public debates or media coverage on science and technology. Drama festival winners go to State House, science congress winners go home. We prefer politics, whose focus is on sharing out money not generating it.

Needless to say, we are not curious. We are easily satisfied with the status quo. Are we asking what is coming after the touch screen? After VVTi? After LED screens? After democracy? We are too eager to acquire the latest technology at the highest price so that we can stand out from the crowd.

Our culture seems to love secrecy and hoarding of ideas — perhaps that’s why witchcraft and Christianity have co-existed for 100 years. Some have argued that we have resigned to being followers when it comes to innovations. We prefer imported second-hand products than local new products.

CHEAPER THINGS

We have grown up believing that new and more expensive products and services are for the “others”. Don’t we export our best tea and coffee? We wait for cheaper things, which are not necessary cheap. An eight-year-old car is more expensive than a new car; calculate its value eight years ago!

How does this time lag drain our economy?

By using old, tired ideas or products, we reduce productivity and relevance. Old cars and hospital equipment reduce efficiency through breakdowns. Such tired ideas are not always cheap. Because we do not produce the products or ideas, such as in consulting or academia, we cannot value them correctly.

Most new ideas are generated to solve specific problems in specific places. If we adopt them without contextualising them, we shall not effectively solve the problems. That is probably why most of our problems have remained unsolved for 50 years.

We offer the wrong solutions because we do not generate homegrown ideas. A good example is unemployment. We have assumed that all that young people need to get jobs is education. They are now educated, but have no jobs. In Germany, apprenticeship has worked very well.

In the long run, we never develop our capacity to generate new ideas and end up becoming dependants. Without new ideas or innovations, we do not spawn new enterprises like Google or Microsoft. We do not create jobs the same way we easily create job seekers.

THE FUTURE

Where do we go from here?

We need to create an innovation ecosystem. From schools to the workplace, we should seek and celebrate new ideas that, if possible, can be commercialised. What happens after science congress? What happens to the great ideas generated by our youngsters in schools and universities?

Let us give credit where it is due; the concepts of incubators and venture capital are slowly becoming part of our vocabulary, but after a lag.

Our national problems will not be solved using the old, tired ideas from textbooks or hearsay. We need new ideas driven by our curiosity and the need to solve real problems, not talk around them.

Kenya is 50 years old; old enough to create ideas devoid of romanticism and naïve idealism that can peacefully resolve our national problems.

The writer is a senior lecturer, University of Nairobi.

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